100% Bonus on Purchased Miles with AviancaTaca LifeMiles is Back

Most folks wouldn’t naturally be interested in a Central American frequent flyer program. But they are partners with United, US Airways, Lufthansa, Swiss, Singapore, and the rest of the Star Alliance. So their miles can be used on those airlines.

And they offer one-way awards for half the price of roundtrip, there are no fuel surcharges, and most lucratively they have “cash and points” awards where you only need 40% of the miles required for the ticket you want to book and then ‘buy up’ the rest of the miles necessary for the award at under 1.3 cents apiece.

Commenter M. on that thread asked me to flag the next time that AviancaTaca was offering a 100% bonus on purchased miles. (They last offered it in July.)

Brand new accounts can’t usually participate in these bonus offers, so it makes sense to join their LifeMiles program to be prepared for when one of these offers comes back.

And indeed, this 100% bonus on purchased miles is only available to accounts that were open prior to today.

If you have an open account, this is a great way to get started with the program. You can buy up to 75,000 miles at 3 cents apiece and receive 150,000 miles (for a cost per mile of 1.5 cents). And then you can leverage those miles with the cash and points award chart for up to 375,000 miles’ worth of awards.

More From View from the Wing

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

[…] Avianca TACA Lifemiles: Gabriel highlights the newest Star Alliance member and one of the most lucrative ways to use mileage programs for the infrequent flyer. Last month I laid out in some detail how to make the most of the program through cheap mileage purchases and cash and points awards to get award travel at a deep discount. (The piece does cite this blog on the current 100% bonus on purchased miles.) […]

“They have “cash and points” awards where you only need 40% of the miles required for the ticket you want to book and then ‘buy up’ the rest of the miles necessary for the award at under 1.3 cents apiece”

Ok–if I’m reading this correctly, I can buy 7000 miles for $210. (Don’t know if that is the regular price or discounted/doubled price?) They have a deal now for 6500 points to buy 20 Cineopolis movie tickets. That’s half price for the luxury theater..wow!

There is also the US Airways ‘grand slam’ promotion which is better and yields US miles at less than 1 cent a piece, so I’m passing on this.

Another plus with US is the call center, although sometimes geographically challenged, they speak english (vs. the avianca call center which is spanish speaking). I see a bigger chance of US de valuing their chart since its been around for awhile.

I’m just wondering what makes everyone so sure that the US Airways Grand Slam will happen this year, given the talks underway with AA? what is their incentive to do this if the program will turn into AA miles on OW?

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.

Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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